become the reformer of a state of society which the worst
evils of Asiatic and English rule combined to prevent him and other
self-sacrificing or disinterested philanthropists from purifying. The
East India Company, at home and in India, had reached that depth of
opposition to light and freedom in any form which justifies Burke's
extremest passages--the period between its triumph on the exclusion of
"the pious clauses" from the Charter of 1793 and its defeat in the
Charter of 1813. We shall reproduce some outlines of the picture which
Ward drew:--[7]

"On landing in Bengal, in the year 1793, our brethren found themselves
surrounded with a population of heathens (not including the Mahometans)
amounting to at least one hundred millions of souls.

"On the subject of the divine nature, with the verbal admission of the
doctrine of the divine unity, they heard these idolaters speak of
330,000,000 of gods. Amidst innumerable idol temples they found none
erected for the worship of the one living and true God. Services
without end they saw performed in honour of the elements and deified
heroes, but heard not one voice tuned to the praise or employed in the
service of the one God. Unacquainted with the moral perfections of
Jehovah, they saw this immense population prostrate before dead matter,
before the monkey, the serpent, before idols the very personifications
of sin; and they found this animal, this reptile, and the lecher
Krishnu {u-caron} and his concubine Radha, among the favourite
deities of the Hindoos...

"Respecting the real nature of the present state, the missionaries
perceived that the Hindoos laboured under the most fatal
misapprehensions; that they believed the good or evil actions of this
birth were not produced as the volitions of their own wills, but arose
from, and were the unavoidable results of, the actions of the past
birth; that their present actions would inevitably give rise to the
whole complexion of their characters and conduct in the following
birth; and that thus they were doomed to interminable transmigrations,
to float as some light substance upon the bosom of an irresistible
torrent...

"Amongst these idolaters no Bibles were found; no sabbaths; no
congregating for religious instruction in any form; no house for God;
no God but a log of wood, or a monkey; no Saviour but the Ganges; no
worship but that paid to abominable idols, and that connected with
dances, songs, and unutterable impuriti